


ready to take a chance again

by owilde



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bad Flirting, Dialogue Heavy, F/F, First Meetings, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 23:31:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14412840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owilde/pseuds/owilde
Summary: Pepper had gotten through reading one page of her document when she saw someone sit down next to her from the corner of her eye.“Hey,” the woman said. “Were you on the cancelled train, too?”Pepper locked her screen and looked up—and blinked in silence.





	ready to take a chance again

**Author's Note:**

> the mcu has far too little women for my femslash loving ass, just saying
> 
> anyway here's some sweet sweet nat/pepper on the eve of infinity war (well. it's the eve in my time zone in fifteen minutes, so good enough)

Pepper pursed her lips as she looked at the board showing the departing trains. Washington DC to New York, at 10:30 pm, cancelled. The next train would depart in the early hours of the morning. Pepper had already checked out of her hotel room, and every place would be full by now – and even if they weren’t, there wasn’t enough time for her to do anything other than check in and get ready to leave again.

She gripped her scolding hot coffee a little harder, feeling the liquid burn her fingertips through the cup. She’d forgotten to take a holder, in a rush to get to her train. Which was cancelled. Brilliant.

Pepper looked away from the board and around the train station. It was mostly abandoned and unsettlingly quiet. A man was cleaning the floor a small distance away, headphones in. He was humming to himself. A couple was sitting on a bench to her left – the other girl was reading, while the other braided her hair, sitting cross-legged behind her.

They looked content. 

Pepper missed being in love, she did. It had been a while since her and Tony’s divorce, and while it had been almost inevitable, it had still broken something within her. She hadn’t really seen anyone, since.

It was mostly her own fault for not even trying.

An announcement rang for the cancellation of the train.

“I got it, thank you,” Pepper muttered to herself. She sighed, taking a sip of her coffee. She needed something to do.

She spotted an empty bench in front of a closed café, and made her way towards it, dragging her suitcase behind her. The wheels sounded loud in the otherwise quiet place. One of the girls glanced at her as she walked past them, before getting back to her braiding.

The bench looked relatively clean, so Pepper sat down on the left side of it and put her coffee down beside her.

The clock was nearing 10:20.

She could call Tony. He’d pick up, she knew. He always did. He could probably get a private jet to pick her up, and she’d be in New York in less than three hours. She could run a bath, have a glass of wine and close her eyes for a few seconds.

But Pepper didn’t want to be dependent on Tony, nor his wealth. So, her train was cancelled – that happened. Things like this happened to normal people, and Pepper would react like a normal person would – meaning, she’d wait for the next one and bide her time.

Pepper had survived board meetings for years, she could survive waiting five hours for a train. She had the patience of a saint, according to Tony, who’d loved to test it whenever possible.

She'd been sitting for a few minutes when the sound of footsteps echoed around the hall. Pepper glanced up from her phone to see a woman run in, glance at the departments board, and stop on her tracks. Her back was to Pepper, but she could see her run her fingers through her hair in exasperation.

The woman looked around her. She didn’t seem out of breath despite the running. Her eyes fell on Pepper, who turned her eyes back to her phone and tried to look like she hadn’t been watching her.

She’d gotten through reading one page of her document when she saw someone sit down next to her from the corner of her eye.

“Hey,” the woman said. “Were you on the cancelled train, too?”

Pepper locked her screen and looked up—and blinked in silence.

The woman was gorgeous. She was wearing an Ultravox tee with a leather jacket and black jeans, completed by laced boots that looked sturdy as hell. Her red hair fell in loose curls around her back, the colour simultaneously natural and not natural at all. Her eyes were a breath taking green, they _had_ to be contacts, hadn’t they—

And she was looking at Pepper expectantly.

“Yes,” Pepper managed, nodding slowly. “I was, yes. Very unfortunate, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” the woman agreed. She smiled a little, and extended her hand towards Pepper. “I’m Natasha, but you can call me Nat if you want to.”

Pepper shook her hand; it was a firm handshake, stronger than she’d expected. “Pepper,” she introduced. “You can—well, I don’t have any nick names, so I suppose you can call me Pepper.”

“Pepper,” Natasha repeated. She looked pleased. She let go of Pepper’s hand, and pushed hers into the pockets of her jacket. She was leaning against the front of the café. “So, I guess we’re both taking the 3:30 train?”

“It’s the one I’m taking, at least,” Pepper said. She lifted her phone up. “I’m booking a ticket, right now.”

Natasha’s eyes widened a little. “Oh, of course,” she said. “I need a fucking ticket, don’t I—excuse my language.”

Pepper laughed. There was something refreshing about Nat - something genuine. “Don’t worry, my ex-husband was much worse. I’m used to it.”

Natasha looked up from where she was typing something on her phone. She looked curious. “When did you separate?” She asked. “If it’s not too personal.”

Nobody had asked Pepper any questions in a long time. Nobody had paid her any attention, really, outside of the company business. And Tony, sometimes, when he remembered that she was human, too.

“Three years ago,” she told Natasha. “We’d only been married a year, dating for four – it was a mutual decision. We weren’t really happy with each other, anymore.”

Well, it had been mutual insofar as she’d told Tony that it wasn’t working anymore, was it, and he’d reluctantly agreed that it wasn’t, but maybe they should just give it some time? And Pepper had given him a resolute no, because at the time all she’d wanted was clean breaks and neatly tied endings, and none of this wait-and-see bullshit.

There had been a period in time, later on, when she’d wondered if they could’ve made it work after all. But it had been too late by then. And the answer would’ve probably been no, regardless. Pepper believed that some things simply couldn’t be fixed.

“Together for five years, huh,” Natasha whistled. “That’s a long time. How do you not get bored of each other?”

Pepper shrugged a little. “You do, sometimes. But that’s relationships. Ups and downs, dry spells. You push through the hard times, because you love them.” She paused. “Until you don’t, anymore, and that’s when you have to do something.”

Natasha titled her head to look up at the ceiling. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love,” she mused. “Girlfriends here and there, but nothing that I could’ve called love. Just haven’t found the right girl, I guess.”

Pepper’s heart was beating loudly against her ribcage. She sipped her coffee, which had cooled down too much, and wished her palms hadn’t been sweating so much. “It’ll come around,” she said. “Eventually.”

“I suppose,” Natasha agreed. Her eyes slid over to Pepper. “Is it nice? Being in love.”

Pepper swallowed. “It’s been so long, I think I’ve forgotten.”

Natasha hummed in acknowledgement. She looked away again. “Do you have any water?”

When Pepper informed her that she didn’t, she bent a little to lift her bag up on the bench, and started rummaging through it.

Pepper only spared it a glance, and was about to look away when something caught her eye.

“Oh my god,” she said quietly, “is that a gun?”

Natasha paused, and looked up at her. She blinked once, twice, her hands still inside the bag and the gun very much visible to Pepper. Then, in one languid motion, she closed the bag and dropped it back on the floor, crossing her arms.

“Yes,” she said curtly. “I have a license to carry it, for reasons I’m not at liberty to discuss.”

Pepper looked at her, really looked at her. Her demeanour had changed; her back became rigid, her expression guarded. She was staring straight ahead of her, not willing to meet Pepper’s eyes.

As a shot in the dark, and knowing that she was crossing lines she couldn’t uncross, Pepper asked, “FBI? _SHIELD_?”

Natasha’s eyes snapped back to her. She frowned. “How do you know about SHIELD?”

“My ex-husband has… affiliations with them,” Pepper said. Feeling brave, she added, “I’m not at liberty to discuss them.”

It took five seconds, she counted, for Natasha’s cool exterior to crumble again. Her shoulders relaxed, and a small smile appeared back on her lips.

“Good,” she said. “Then you know that in this line of duty, I need that gun.”

“I know,” Pepper said. “Don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t worrying,” Natasha said.  

Pepper cocked her head. “You were worrying a little.”

“Wasn’t.”

“A little.”

“Mmh, nope.”

Pepper laughed. She gulped the rest of her cold coffee down, and reached out to throw the cup into the trash can a little off from the bench.

“How long have you been working for SHIELD, then?” She asked, turning back to Natasha.

She shrugged. “A long time,” she said, vaguely. “Technically, everything about my time before and after joining SHIELD is strictly classified to people with at least level five clearance.”

Before Pepper could say something idiotic, like, _that’s hot_ , she hurried to say, “It must be a dangerous job, right?”

Natasha looked amused. “Yeah,” she said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Pepper repeated weakly. “Sorry, I’m quite rusty. It’s been a while.”

Natasha quirked a brow. “Since what?”

“Since…” Pepper trailed off. “It doesn’t matter.”

“No,” Natasha insisted. “Since what?”

Pepper huffed. “Since I’ve held a conversation, much less tried to flirt with someone who wasn’t my employee or my ex-husband.”

There was a small silence. The couple had disappeared, and the cleaner had moved on to another spot; it was just the two of them.

“Oh,” Natasha said, eventually. “Flirted?”

“Tried to,” Pepper corrected. “I don’t know how to do any of this, you know.”

She should just stop talking. To everyone. Clearly, it would’ve been better for the society as a whole if Pepper just stuck to her job, which she was excellent at, and left socialising to Tony, who excelled in being charming and brilliant to anyone he came across.

Natasha cleared her throat. “Well,” she started, “I think you’re doing great, actually. For what it’s worth.”

Pepper glanced at her; she wasn’t blushing, not exactly, but something akin to it. “I am?”

“A beautiful woman dressed in a goddamn _suit_ clocks my gun and admits to flirting with me?” Natasha snorted. “Yeah, I think I should be the one feeling inadequate.”

Pepper smacked her lightly on the arm. “I wasn’t feeling _inadequate_.”

Natasha grinned. “Uh-huh.”

“I wasn’t!” Pepper argued. “I have great self-esteem.”

They sat in silence for a while. The clock didn’t seem to be moving any faster towards 3:30, no matter how much Pepper would have wanted it to. Not that she minded spending time with Natasha, but she had meetings in New York she couldn’t post pone, and arriving to them late and sleep deprived wasn’t exactly what she’d had on her mind.

Again, she thought about calling Tony, and again she decided against it.

“Hey,” Natasha said after a while. “So, after we get back to New York… you think you might ever want to catch a cup of coffee, together?”

Pepper grinned to herself. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said.

“Well, someone was being shit at flirting with me,” Natasha retorted.

“You admitted I was doing alright!”

“I did that just to please you, Pep. You were doing horribly.”

Pepper’s heart flipped. “Pep?” She asked.

Natasha shrugged, sheepishly. “You said you don’t have any nick names. Now you do.”

And if Pepper then asked for Natasha’s phone number, and if they made plans for coffee or dinner or whichever worked out better, and if they sat together on the train on their way home, and if, upon departing, Natasha kissed her lightly on the cheek, and Pepper’s heart stammered and her palms sweated like she was back in middle school, well.

That was just between the two of them, then.


End file.
